Under the name of “the Council for New England,” they obtained from the king in 1620 a new charter,[4] granting to them all the territory in North America extending “in breadth from forty degrees of northerly latitude, from the equinoctial line, to forty-eight degrees of the said northerly latitude, and in length by all the breadth aforesaid throughout the main-land from sea to sea.”  In the new grant the number of grantees was limited to forty, and all other persons enjoying rights in the company’s lands stood in the position of their tenants.  Thus, like the Plymouth Company, the new company proved defective in co-operative power, and the first actual settlement of New England was due to an influence little fancied by any of its members.

Religious opinions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were great political forces.  The Christian church of Europe, before the days of Luther, held the view that the pope of Rome was the only infallible interpreter of the Holy Scriptures, and against this doctrine Luther led a revolt denominated Protestantism, which insisted upon the right of private judgment.  Nevertheless, when the reformed churches came to adopt articles and canons of their own they generally discarded this fundamental difference, and, affirming infallibility in themselves, enlisted the civil power in support of their doctrines.

Hence, in 1559, Queen Elizabeth caused her Parliament to pass two famous statutes, the Act of Supremacy, which required all clergymen and office-holders to renounce the spiritual as well as temporal jurisdiction of all foreign princes and prelates; and the Act of Uniformity, which forbade any minister from using any other liturgy or service than that established by Parliament.[5]

These acts, though directed originally against the Roman Catholics, were resented by many zealous English clergymen who, during the reign of Queen Mary, had taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany, and learned while there the spiritual and political doctrines of John Calvin.  These English refugees were the first Puritans, and in the beginning the large majority had no desire of separating from the church of which the sovereign was the head, but thought to reform it from within, according to their own views of ecclesiastical policy.  They wanted, among other things, to discard the surplice and Book of Common Prayer and to abolish the order of bishops.  Queen Elizabeth looked upon their opinions as dangerous, and harassed them before the Court of High Commission, created in 1583 for enforcing the acts of supremacy and uniformity.  But her persecution increased rather than diminished the opposition, and finally there arose a sect called Independents, who flatly denied the ecclesiastical supremacy of the queen and claimed the right to set up separate churches of their own.  The Scotch Calvinists worked out an elaborate form of Presbyterian government, by synods and assemblies, which later played a great part in England.